A/N:- “It was like an evening at Penshurst ... handsome hours such as these, charged with good wine and light talk and music, enclosed with comfort, and incised all about with a curving, trephining wit.” (Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle)- In a time (1560s) when Australia was not yet discovered and no reliable method of measuring longitudes had been found, the possibility of an unknown continent like Middle-earth doesn’t sound as fantastic and improbable as it would in our time.- For those unfamiliar with Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: all characters mentioned here (except Lymond) are historical figures interested or working in the fields of cartography, astronomy & astrology, and geography.

30.09.07 B-drabble for Denise, who asked for an encounter between Imrahil and Francis Crawford of Lymond.